Quote:
Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield
Perhaps it does. But skills retraining, the govt's other form of assistance, is pie-in-the-sky stuff. Most of the people written about in this excellent article have no hope of switching careers.
Trump promises them jobs and dignity. It's lies from him, of course, but the idea is on the right track. Our govt could assist them in the manner they seek with a massive New Deal style infrastructure rebuilding program. And I think we'll see it do exactly that in the coming decade. We either do something like that, or we give up on the lower middle class entirely.
|
I agree that skills retraining is weak sauce. We should be spending money on infrastructure right now, which creates decent jobs. It's the Republicans who are standing in the way.
That said, there are parts of this country where the jobs aren't coming back. Trump isn't promising those people anything except that he'll stick it to the elites, and for a lot of people, that's enough.
Quote:
|
I don't think he's trying to change anything. He's telling us why a large segment of society isn't listening to elites.
|
I was quoting him.
Quote:
|
As to the regional comment, yes and no. The angry working class person in Levittown isn't culturally 1:1 with the guy in WV. But the complaints are the same, and so is the attraction to Trump. They don't want to be simultaneously dictated to, ignored, and offered a handout.
|
I think the complaints are a little different, and I think it's useful to hear the differences.
Quote:
|
The best of this excellent piece is where the author discusses personal responsibility. And it focuses on what I think is, strangely, the most positive element of a very bleak story. In voting for Trump, these lost souls are choosing to take their chances rather than bet on expansion of the safety net to sustain them. My knee jerk reaction is the same as Thomas Frank's ("these rubes are voting for a plutocrat who's going to screw them"). But that's elitist, and it's narrow-minded. What these simple people are doing is throwing a hand grenade at a system in which they no longer have a place. Perhaps that's anti-social, and it's probably foolish. But I have to admire the sentiment... "I'd rather possibly blow it all up than fade away, forgotten." Can't fault a man for that.
|
Sure you can. They're not just blowing up themselves.
If there's a party that believes in "I've got mine, and you're on your own," it's the Republican Party, and it has waged a war to make government less effective for decades. That war hurts working people.
